Stars On Your Ceiling
by writergirl8
Summary: They would always figure things out together. It was a comforting pattern, warm and dependable, like a sweater that fits just right no matter how many winters you wear it. The more worn in it is, the more comfortable the sweater, and Lydia feels the same way about Stiles. She just never intended to fall in love with him.


Sometimes, Lydia Martin lies on her bed and counts lifetimes on the glow-in-the-dark stars that are scattered across her ceiling.

She likes to think that each plastic star represents a decision that she could have made differently to change her story. That each green shape on her ceiling symbolizes a life in which she is not lying on her bed and wishing on a different world. The tightrope that she treads always leads her to Stiles Stilinski, but Lydia tries to avoid that. She can't do that. Not when his tightrope no longer leads to her.

Even though Lydia has typed this text message several times over, she can't find the strength press the send button. Instead, she stares up at the stars and lifts the bottle of wine up to her lips, taking long gulps. If her mother saw this, she would probably hand Lydia a glass and chastise her for not savoring the taste.

In what lifetime could Stiles be lying on this bed with her, passing the wine bottle back and forth?

He follows her everywhere she goes, but it isn't his fault. He doesn't ask for this anymore—he'd always been a wisp on her radar, and now that his echo resounds loudly in her ears, it shouldn't be surprising to Lydia that he doesn't care about her anymore. She's lucky: she's smart, and she's beautiful, and she's got a gorgeous wardrobe and a wonderful mother. She thinks, slightly scornfully, that she has been due for heartbreak for a long time now. It's just surprising that Stiles would be the one to deliver it.

It's always been annoying to have to deal with his feelings when she was so uninterested in him, but at least she could depend on them. When Lydia found dead bodies, her first instinct would always be to call Stiles. And then Stiles, and his feelings, would arrive in ten minutes flat and they would figure things out together. It was a comforting pattern, warm and dependable, like a sweater that fits just right no matter how many winters you wear it. The more worn in it is, the more comfortable the sweater, and Lydia feels the same way about Stiles.

She just never intended to fall in love with him.

Finding bodies now means scrolling all the way down to the 'S' category of her contact list and clicking into his contact before remembering that she can't tap the call button anymore. His grinning face, a selfie that he'd taken with her phone, always causes an unpleasant lurch in Lydia's stomach, but what if he's having sex with Malia right now? What if they're cuddled up on the couch in Stiles' living room having lessons on how to be socially acceptable? What if he loves Malia more than he could ever love Lydia?

Sometimes she wants to text Allison and make a snide comment about Stiles being more like Malia's brother or teacher, something snarky and sardonic. But then she remembers that Allison isn't here to snort out a laugh and all of the wit gets knocked out of Lydia. With the absence of Allison, she remembers that she has no one. Lydia has never truly had close friends, ones that she could be really honest with, but this is bigger. This is worse. This is a complete isolation in which she knows that the two people that she depended on most are no longer here for her, and one by choice.

Stiles' avoidance of her is a very purposeful one. She hadn't noticed it at first, too absorbed in rolling heads and heavy bodies. Then weeks started rolling by and Stiles had become more swept up in his lust filled frenzy of a relationship and less invested in picking up the phone whenever Lydia needed someone to talk to. He had been her anchor—the person that stabilized her whenever she felt so off kilter that she wanted to _scream_. He had been the person who discovered her abilities and made her feel like she wasn't crazy. She had mattered to him. But now she doesn't. Now he doesn't meet her eyes with hope anymore; rather, he gazes upon her with an indifference that isn't quite cold but isn't kind, either.

It's gotten to the point where Lydia sits behind him in English class and silently wills him to turn around and just _smile_ at her. She knows that he's exhausted from always being with Malia- she can see it in his eyes- and she just wants to see that familiar beam stretch across his lips. He doesn't smile stupidly anymore. Stiles used to smile stupidly at Lydia all of the time.

If she presses the send button on this text, it's probably not going to change anything. He probably won't begin to turn around and smile at her in class. He probably won't remember the fact that she's a banshee and she has no idea what she's doing, or the fact that her best friend is dead and she is all by herself. He probably won't remember the fact that she, Lydia Martin, is still here. And if she presses the send button of this text message, she's just going to be reminded of the fact that Stiles doesn't care about her anymore.

Meanwhile, she is spiraling.

Lydia taps the send key before she can stop herself from doing it.

Ten minutes pass before Stiles answers, and it doesn't come in the form of a text. Instead, his silly face lights up Lydia's screen as her phone vibrates, letting her know that she's got a call to answer. She breathes in sharply, not expecting this. He used to call her every night and talk theories—they were smart together, and they usually figured things out by fueling each other. Needless to say, Stiles never calls her anymore.

"What's wrong?" he asks urgently. His voice is so familiar, even in its desperation. Lydia presses the phone against her ear, suddenly feeling small and scared. It's an unusually feeling for her. "What's urgent, Lydia?"

"I may have had too much to drink? Maybe. Don't count on it."

Stiles breathes out, his breath heavy over the phone.

"So nobody is dying?"

The wine sloshes in the bottle as Lydia hugs it to her chest. She's drinking red, and it will probably stain her lacy white tank top, but she doesn't care right now. She looks up at her stars and thinks about which one could lead her to a life in which her lips are moving against Stiles' right now.

"Somebody has to be dying for me to send you a text?" Lydia asks. She wants to gently tug her heart out of her chest and then sling it across the room. Watch it splatter against the wall, dripping blood on the soft white carpet that her mother loves so much. Lydia might stab the heart for good measure, just to make sure that she really, truly becomes numb.

"No," he says, but he doesn't mean it. He mumbles it; the word struggles to leave his tongue in spite of the fact that it's so simple. One syllable. He can't lie to her for one syllable.

"Stiles," she whispers, cradling the phone against her ear. Her mouth is right next to the speaker and she pictures him wincing as the volume of her whisper causes him pain. She wants him to able to hear all of the layers beneath it and understand what she's trying to say to him. He has peeled her back and made it so that all of her pieces seem to fit together- seem to make sense- for the first time.

"Lydia," he says carefully. He's starting to sound breathless. "Are you okay?"

She doesn't say anything. She wishes she'd had more to drink. Stiles knows that she isn't okay. He's the one that figures it out. He's the one that figured her out.

"Are you here yet?" she asks in response.

"Almost," he admits, and her stomach jolts as headlights appear on the wall of her bedroom, alerting her to the fact that a car has just pulled into her driveway.

"You can come right upstairs," she says. She puts a cork in the wine as she ends the call. Stiles hasn't been in her room in months. Stiles hasn't done something like this in months. He had held her a few months ago, twice, actually, and he had stroked her hair and let his thumb brush over her bottom lip as he pulled away. But Lydia has been living off of that contact for too long now, and it's all becoming hollow. She can't gnaw at the moments anymore, sucking the marrow out of them. She's already taken everything that they're worth. She needs something new.

Stiles is wearing a blue plaid flannel and a white Captain America shirt and a worried expression. He peers carefully around the door, sucking in a breath when he sees Lydia lying on her bed. She wonders how she looks and if there's any makeup left from earlier today, and then she wonders when it started to matter whether Stiles saw her without makeup. He's one of the only people in Beacon Hills that has seen her face without foundation, eyeliner, blush, and mascara. Why should he care now?

He has a girlfriend.

"How's… how's your mom?"

Lydia narrows her eyes and cocks her head, sitting up and leaning back against her elbows so that she can squint at Stiles.

"Really? That's your play."

He shakes his head almost imperceptibly before coming into her room and shutting the door behind himself. Stiles leans against the door with his palms still against it, just staring at her.

"Lydia-"

"You never call me 'Lyds' anymore."

Pain flits across Stiles' expression. He licks his bottom lip, stalling for time that Lydia doesn't want to give him. He doesn't deserve time. He doesn't deserve anything after the way he's treated her.

"I-"

"No!" she says, cutting him off. "Stiles, I thought you were… the one person that would never consciously hurt me. So what the fuck have you been doing since Allison died? You're gone. You're just gone. My best friend is _gone _but you're gone, Stiles. And you used to be here and now you don't even talk to me anymore and that's just shit."

If Stiles had seemed exhausted before, it is nothing in comparison to how he looks now. He rubs a hand over his face, peering at her through his fingers.

"I'm sorry," he says, emotionless. "I thought you wouldn't notice."

"I noticed," Lydia shoots back flatly. She tries not to feel. She wills herself not to care. "Why?" she asks, desperate to hear the answer that she already knows. Lydia knows what this is. She's thought about it far too much to not have come to the proper conclusion. "Why, Stiles?"

"Lydia." His voice is strained.

"No. Stop. I need you to be honest."

She sits up on her bed and sets her feet on the floor, then places her hands flatly on the bare skin of her upper thighs.

"You know the answer to this already," he reminds her.

"Malia."

"Yeah."

"We can't exist in the same universe for you?"

"Lydia, whenever I'm around you, I feel… I feel like I need to stand by this door instead of close to you because I'm just going to end up wrapping my arms around you and Malia is going to smell it later, and she's going to smell my guilt, and she's going to know that I didn't hug you because we're friends. Not exclusively. And-"

"And I fell in love with you."

He stops babbling abruptly, his eyes widening.

"You did what?"

"I fell in love with you, Stiles."

Two pink lips separate as his mouth drops open. Quickly, he remembers his manners and shuts his mouth, swallowing hard as he looks at her.

"I… I… what…"

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to fall in love with you, but I did and I need you to stop ignoring me and start being there for me, Malia or not, because you're _hurting _me, Stiles. This isn't a game anymore. This is real for both of us."

He gapes at her, then slinks to the floor of her bedroom, back still against the door. Stiles can't look at her, so instead he looks at his knees, which are pulled tightly up against his chest.

"I'm in a relationship."

Slowly, Lydia gets off of her bed and approaches Stiles. She sits on the floor in front of him, her bare toes pressing up against his converse.

"I know."

"Malia needs me."

"I love you."

"You don't need me."

She shakes her head and leans closer to him.

"I don't need you. But I _want_ you. And there's a difference."

This isn't math, or physics. Lydia feels terrifyingly out of her depth as she looks into his lost eyes, whiskey brown and hungry for answers. He wants somebody to tell him what to do. He wants somebody to give him an out. She'd feel terrible about doing this to him, but after the way he's been treating her, Lydia doesn't feel sorry. She feels vindictive. She feels abandoned. She feels like she needs to tug the power back to herself in any way that she can, even if it means releasing one of her ghosts into the air between them.

The anger that she is experiencing rubs awkwardly against the fresh feeling of love that has been slowly overtaking Lydia. Now it has forced itself into the forefront of her mind, and in spite of the fact that she is a distant star on Stiles' bedroom ceiling, he is every single one that blinks from hers. He is every story that the stars tell.

Stiles waits a few minutes before speaking again.

"We made choices," he says, enunciating the words clearly. Lydia hasn't seen him smile in such a long time. Why doesn't he smile anymore? "We picked paths. I picked Malia. I mean, granted, I didn't have all of the facts, but I… I can't leave her. She needs me. You don't need me."

Lydia nods, a few tears sliding down her cheeks and dripping onto her red skirt. She's never cried over something that she hasn't had, but now that she is, it stings her cheeks. The tears that slip into her mouth are bitter with her anger, but she's glad that they're noiseless. Her face doesn't contort either. She just stares at him, watching him use her doorknob to hoist himself up.

It doesn't occur to her until he's already out the door of her bedroom that she could have told him that she does need him. She _does_. She needs him to be her partner in crime. To help her learn how to master her powers. To keep her from turning into Meredith and tumbling down a slope of insanity. That's what she needs Stiles for.

Her phone buzzes and Lydia grabs for it—Stiles' headlights haven't appeared in her window. He's still in the driveway, and maybe he wants to come back in? But it's not Stiles, it's Scott, and his short text message, which asks if she's alright, causes Lydia to brush away one final tear before she forces composure upon herself.

Even though Stiles won't talk to her, he will always protect her.

(OOO)

Green always makes her feel powerful, so Lydia wears green every day over the next two weeks. She allows the soft fabrics to hug her hips, or squeeze her arms, or dance around her thighs on her skirts. She just need green somewhere on her body, along with her red lipstick and expertly done hair. If a wisp is out of place, it's only because Lydia has purposefully put it there. This is how she takes control. This is what she does to make certain that her life is in balance.

Stiles doesn't notice her makeup. Lydia knows that he doesn't, because he won't even look at her anymore. He still doesn't smile at anyone, and even though everybody thinks that is it because of the Benefactor, Lydia knows better. He isn't empty because of Derek's power loss or Scott's recklessness or the bad guys that keep popping up everywhere, forcing Stiles to figure out a solution before it's too late, and always in the nick of time. Stiles feels empty because of what Lydia has done to him. This is her fault.

She doesn't agree with the way he's acting, but he's _Stiles. _He is naturally, innately good. He has chosen Malia and he would never do to her what Lydia wants to do to her. She doesn't _want _to want that, but she does. Lydia wants Stiles to pick her, to choose her, and the piece of her that is so used to getting everything that she wants doesn't really care how they go about it. She just wants it to happen.

Lydia is sick of not being with Stiles Stilinski.

The thing is, though… she's not going to push him. She's not that person anymore, and just because she hasn't gotten what she wants, it doesn't mean she's going to resort to being the Lydia that she was sophomore year. She isn't the same girl that fancied herself in love with Jackson and she doesn't think that the same things matter. Allison is dead and everything has changed and Lydia is grateful for many things, but one stands out the most. She is glad that Allison knew the changed Lydia, the one who she has grown into. Lydia likes this version so much better.

The new Lydia Martin doesn't do anything harmful when the guy that she is in love with has a girlfriend. The new Lydia Martin does not hurt their relationship, or hurt the people in the relationship. The new Lydia Martin backs off and waits for Stiles Stilinski to decide what to do because it isn't her turn anymore. This isn't up to her.

Stiles has always viewed their world through the lens of a chess player, and she isn't surprised when he makes his move exactly two weeks after Lydia has told him that she's in love with him. They are seventeen and exhausted and people are dying and it is their fault; it _has _to be their fault. Nobody else has the power to stop it. Everybody who could have is dying, and Lydia is on that list. Lydia could be killed at any time. She is perfectly aware of it, and Stiles is too.

"You need somebody to come home with you."

He says it shortly; impatiently. He hasn't talked to her in two weeks, and there's something achingly familiar about the fact that his first words to her are about keeping her safe. This what they're good at. They solve and they protect. Stiles has a baseball bat and Lydia has her mind.

"No," she says, just as impatient. She can match his tone. Lydia doesn't really want to talk to him either—it fucking _hurts_. Rather than look at him, she roots through her bag, which she has pressed up against her locker. "I can protect myself."

For the past few months, Lydia has been taking archery lessons. She might have told Stiles about it, had they been talking, but they aren't. Lydia hasn't told anybody and she's quite alright with that. She'd picked it up surprisingly well after a few disappointing sessions. Lydia had gone home, studied the physics of it, and come back ready to go. Now she has a bow sitting in the back of her car and several arrows in her over-sized purse, lolling around next to her lipstick and hairbrush.

"I'm sure you can," Stiles says, and Lydia looks up quickly, trying to find insincerity in his expression. She doesn't, and he knows what she's doing. He rolls his eyes at her. "Lydia, just… let me send Liam home with you."

Lydia tries to hide the smile on her face when he says that; Scott may be the alpha, but Stiles is the leader of the pack in so many ways, and she finds the fact that he hasn't realized this fact to be endearingly funny.

"Nope," she says. "And you know I'll just scare him away if you try to send him after me without my permission, so you should probably just learn to leave me alone." She pats his shoulder for effect and he stiffens at the contact. "I'm a big girl, Stiles."

He swears under his breath.

"You're right," he says, frustration building in his voice. "You would send him away. I guess I'll just have to go home with you."

It's a challenge, Lydia knows, but she's never going to be the one that backs down. This is her turf, and her school, and her Stiles, and she's not going to let him win this one. She raises two perfect eyebrows and purposefully swipes some lip gloss across her bottom lip.

"Fine," she says, turning around. Her green skirt fans out around her upper thighs. Lydia smirks. "We're watching _The Notebook_."

She hears, rather than sees, Stiles bang his head against her locker door to shut it. Then she sees him stride down the hallway after her.

"I'll see you at your house," he says, warning in his voice.

"How about I just go ahead and give you a ride?" Lydia suggests. "I saw Scott and Kira take off with the jeep an hour ago. And it's raining, you know, so the walk might be a bit uncomfortable."

There's a frustrated groan, and then Stiles catches up to her, his hand brushing too close to hers.

"That's just great," he says. "Okay. Great."

They don't talk until they reach the car, and Stiles' hands are shaking and he can't buckle his seatbelt as Lydia starts driving. She is grateful for all of the practice that she's had with acting like she has no feelings because this is one of the hardest things she's ever had to do.

"Why are you on your phone?" Lydia asks as they turn down Stiles' street. They whiz past his house. He stares at it as they pass.

"I'm texting Malia," Stiles tells her. He turns to look at her profile."To let her know where I am."

"Are you telling her that you're with me?"

"Yes. She'll smell you anyways. Better to just tell her now so that she doesn't… suspect anything."

"I doubt she would 'suspect anything' even if you didn't tell her," Lydia says coolly. She tries to ice her tone over so that the kindness in her words isn't apparent. "You're not the kind of guy that would hurt her, and she knows it."

Stiles hits the back of his head against the seat.

"Okay," he says, measured. "See, I don't understand why you're so sure about that."

Lydia flicks on her turn signal.

"Are _you _sure?"

When she looks over at him, Stiles is swallowing, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down.

"No." He hesitates. She can feel the tension of the moment as it reverberates through the car. The question is on the tip of his tongue, but he's not going to ask it. He can't ask it. This is going to be so much harder if he asks it. "So. You're in love with me, huh?"

Lydia's fingers tighten around the steering wheel.

"I'm officially adding this to the list of things that we are not allowed to talk about until you do not have a girlfriend."

He looks vulnerable for the first time in a long time and it makes Lydia's heart hammer in her chest.

"I can't stop thinking about it," he admits, voice slightly desperate. "I need you to tell me."

"Tell you what?"

"When? Why? How?"

She quirks a smile.

"That's pretty broad. Why don't you zero-in on exactly what you want to ask so that I can make it easier for you to kick me to the side once I put myself out there."

Stiles closes his eyes, squeezing them tight like he is hoping that this is a nightmare. A wounded Lydia isn't a Lydia that anybody is used to dealing with, but she thinks that he can handle it better than most people could.

"Lyds…"

"No," she says abruptly. "Stiles. Come on. You can't ask this of me just to get some vindictive pleasure in rejecting me." It's obvious that he isn't doing that, but Lydia doesn't want to admit that she realizes this is just as difficult for him as it is for her. "You don't love me."

Two hands curl into fists on his upper thighs as Stiles registers what she has said.

"Do you actually think that?" She looks over at him. Shrugs. Cocks her head to the side before looking back at the road. "Lydia, just because I didn't choose you, doesn't mean I didn't want to. It doesn't mean that I don't love you."

They're pulling onto her street; Lydia wonders if this conversation gets to continue after they arrive at her house.

"I-"

"No, hang on. I have been in love with you since the third grade, and do you honestly think that something like that goes away just because I started dating somebody else?"

Lydia imagines throwing him responses that hurt like knives and seeing the shock on his face as he is stabbed in the gut.

"No," she says instead. Simple. Classy. Unyielding, which is probably what she needs right now. After pulling into her driveway, she turns the motor off and unbuckles her seatbelt, every movement careful and slow. Stiles, on the other hand, unbuckles his seatbelt like it's on fire, shoving the car door open so that he can get out as quickly as possible.

"I don't believe it anyways," comes his bitter voice. Lydia arches an eyebrow, slamming the door behind her.

"What?"

"I don't believe you. That you're in love with me."

As her insides collapse, her outside betrays nothing.

"Stiles, you can be so… just, shut up. God, you're stupid sometimes."

He stills for several moments, and Lydia's hand is already on the doorknob by the time he moves. Stiles bounds after her into the house, whipping the door shut behind himself and knocking Lydia against the wall in his haste to get to her. She drops her large purse on the floor and just stares up at him as he traps her against the wall with his body, arm stretching high above her head on the perfect white finish. Her mother will kill her if it smudges, but Lydia doesn't care.

"Fine then. Just, say, rhetorically, that I magically believe that you love me. Tell me why."

"Why what?"

The tenor of her voice must be giving away how rattled she is right now, because Stiles closes his eyes when he hears her response.

"Why do you love me?"

"I'm not doing this."

"I don't… I don't fucking believe you, Lydia!"

"Fine!" she hollers, pushing him away from her. "I love you because of your stupid wardrobe and because of the fact that you desperately need a haircut but are too busy saving everybody's lives to go get one. Do you believe me yet?" He shakes his head. "I love you because we were friends first, and I got to know you before I ever considered wanting to be with you in that way, and that's never happened to me before. I love you because every time you make sex jokes I have to stop myself from laughing, and it gets harder with each joke."

"Lydia. You can stop now."

"I love you because you'd rather burn with Scott than watch him die and not be able to do anything about it. I love you because you told me to call you first whenever I find a body… you never ran away from me during a time when everybody else did."

Her voice is getting louder and louder and louder and she _can't_ stop. He started this, he opened this up, and now she can finally say what has been building up for a year. Lydia breathes heavily as Stiles gets close to her again, his hand cupping her cheek. He stares into her eyes, brown meeting hazel.

"I love you because when I feel myself slipping away into the same insanity that killed Meredith, I know that I can depend on you to be there, pulling me out of it when I truly need you. You would never abandon me in the same way that other people have."

"Shit."

His forehead comes to rest on her forehead and they breathe together. Lydia's voice softens.

"I love you because, when I kissed you in that locker room, you didn't say 'you're really beautiful' or 'you're really good.' You said 'you're really smart.' And do you know how many guys have said that to me? Do you know how many guys have seen me for that? One. You. Just you, Stiles. _You_."

This kiss is different.

He is the one that has carefully fitted his lips to hers. He draws kisses from her slowly, bringing small moans from her mouth as his tongue moves against hers. There's something precise about this kiss, like Stiles has been planning the way he's going to kiss her when he finally gets the chance to do it. She tries not to shudder when he grips her hips and pulls her body tighter against his.

"I love you." The words are smashed up against Lydia's lips and she sips them from him, taking them in. She brings a hand up to stroke his face, comforting him and keeping him close simultaneously.

And they've already started, so why stop now?

Once they've reached her bedroom, Lydia expects him to fuck her. Lydia Martin gets fucked all the time, and she's good at it. She knows how to respond to it, and what to do in return, and what she likes and when men like. But when Stiles moves slowly into her, his eyes leisurely remaining on hers, and lets out a low sigh at the feeling, Lydia knows that this is different.

Nobody has ever made love to her before, but that's what this is. They're not fucking; they're making love. She doesn't know how to handle being held like so tenderly, or how to handle being touched so reverentially, or how to handle the way he's looking at her, so she closes her eyes and tries to give him back everything that he's giving her.

The stars on her ceiling glow as Stiles falls asleep to the pitter-patter of the rain against Lydia's bedroom window, his arms still wrapped around Lydia.

(OOO)

She counts his freckles as he rubs sleep from his eyes.

Lydia starts with the ones on his pale shoulders, her eyes trailing over the sun-kissed splotches that stain his skin. Her pupils follow the path of her fingers and Stiles shivers as her small hands ghost over his flesh. Short fingers, covered in ballerina pink nail polish, find their way across the his jaw. She continues to count the tiny dots, tracing patterns that she makes up. He's a constellation, lying on the bed beside her with sleep-sour breath and eyes that haven't adjusted to the bright light of the morning. She likes the way he blinks slowly and uncertainly, sluggish in the golden hue of the bedroom. It suggests that this isn't special; that they always wake up together.

But she doesn't want to think about what happens when he remembers that they don't. She doesn't want to think about what happens when he peels the covers back from their bodies and steps onto the soft rug that lines the floor of her bedroom. Her gut aches in terrified anticipation for that moment, but if she swallows hard enough, she can force it back down her gullet. It settles like a heavy tree trunk in her stomach, growing larger with her anxiety. If Stiles notices, his face doesn't tell her anything. He simply lets his eyes drift shut as she taps her fingers against his chin.

Lydia kisses the cheek that is illuminated by sun, then lets herself drift over to the other side, grazing her lips over his skin as she does. He doesn't breathe as she touches the part of his face hidden by shadow, brushing her thumb over his bottom lip as she kisses the spot where a bright red blush has formed on his cheek. And she doesn't know if she wants to cry or laugh, so instead she moves upwards and leaves butterfly kisses on his cheekbone.

His stomach puffs out against her as he sucks in a deep breath, and she moves with him as he releases it. The sigh is lazy and relaxed, washing over them. Lydia places a content kiss on his lips, familiar and intimate, and that's when his body stiffens.

"We can't," he says, voice strained. "Lydia, we can't."

"We did," she reminds him, the small shard of hope that she'd been holding onto beginning to deflate instantly.

"I know," Stiles admits. "But we can't."

Lydia leans her forehead against his, pressing her mind to his mind. This is the part of Lydia that stores all of her memories of elementary school, when they first met, and middle school, when she didn't know that he existed, and now high school, where they have become a mess of two intertwined human beings that aren't quite sure how they got to be in the place that they're in.

Her heart had figured out that she's in love with Stiles long before her mind did, but she can't think about that. Lydia is incapable of thinking of the before, when everything was different and better but not better and then everything changed and Stiles became _Stiles _and she is left behind in a world where he loves her and doesn't want to be with her. It feels like an alternate universe.

"Lyds?" Stiles murmurs weakly. She closes her eyes as he cards his fingers tenderly through her hair, undoing the knots they had made together.

"Why?" she asks, dragging her eyes forcefully up to his. The twinge of desperation in her voice causes something cautious to register in Stiles's expression.

"I have Malia," he whispers.

"You could have had me."

Stiles hesitates.

"But we… we didn't do the right thing. Right? I- I mean, I know we wanted to do it, but it was wrong. So we can't. Not again. Right?"

Her insides turn hollow, filled with nothing but an insubstantial shame. Lydia's heart moves from the tips of her toes to the top of her head where it thumps dangerously, threatening to burst out of her body. Slowly, she squeezes her eyes shut. When she opens them again, she can't feel her heartbeat anymore.

"You're right," Lydia says, the words shallow and meaningless. "We can't."

She means to slice a piece of Stiles, just like he's pared off a part of her. When she takes in his crushed expression, she realizes that she has succeeded. That it had been a test. That he had been trying to read her to figure out how to proceed.

But it's too late to take it back. She doesn't back down—not when so much is at stake. Stiles nods his head, slowly at first, then more quickly. Lydia shouldn't be surprised when he begins to sit up because he has always taken his cues from her and it is her fault that she has given him the wrong one.

As he gets out of bed and walks to the bathroom, Lydia lets everything blur except for the freckles that are scattered across his flesh.

(OOO)

"So you and Stiles slept together."

Scott says it in a matter of fact tone of voice, like it isn't this big, enormous thing that turned Stiles into a person that Lydia has never wanted him to be. She knows it's not her fault that Stiles cheated on his girlfriend, but she hadn't exactly discouraged it.

"It seems that way," Lydia says, bending over her notebook so that she can pretend to jot something down. She doesn't want to treat this like a big deal because it's not allowed to be a big deal.

"And then he snuck out your window the next morning."

"Apparently so."

While Lydia remains casual, Scott seems taken aback by her mannerisms.

"He's wrecked, Lydia."

Even though her interest is piqued, the fact remains that Stiles has not talked to her since they both accidentally rejected each other. He's probably consumed by guilt, which Lydia does not blame him for. She feels guilty too. Every time she sees Malia, sees the odd contortion that crosses Malia's face as the two of them meet eyes, a fresh wave of anger washes over Lydia. Her life isn't supposed to be some corny love triangle in which she becomes the mistress. She isn't the mistress type anymore; she is the banshee, and the AP student, and the girl whose best friend died. Those are her identifiers.

"Is that so."

"Are you surprised?" Scott asks, eyes searching Lydia's face. He is twisted around in his desk because the teacher is out of the room, and even though all of them are supposed to be doing schoolwork, Lydia doesn't mind breaking the rules to talk about this. Despite her outward calm, her mind has been storming about having sex with Stiles since it happened on Friday night. Finally being able to talk to somebody about it is a gift.

Somebody besides Prada, of course.

"I understand that he's upset that he cheated on Malia, yes," Lydia replies smoothly, avoiding what Scott is actually asking about.

"He's not happy," says Scott, and that's when Lydia's eyes snap up to him. Pleasure resonates in Scott's eyes as he sees that he has finally struck a chord in her. "Stiles likes feeling needed, right? Everybody knows that. But being with Malia is kind of exhausting for him. He would never admit it, but god, Lydia. He's like a babysitter sometimes. He would never have been able to pull himself out of that relationship, but you could have. So why didn't you?"

"He started it!" Lydia hisses quietly. She's glad that most of the students have their ear buds in because she doesn't plan on having this conversation rationally. "He said 'we can't' and I said 'why can't we' and-"

"And you're not stupid!" Scott cuts in. "You know he was testing you."

"I don't know exactly when we got familiar enough to have a conversation like this," Lydia grumbles, ducking her head down.

"You're just saying that because you know I'm right."

"Okay, McCall." Lydia throws down her pen. "What do you think I should do? Hmm? Do you have a master plan to make Stiles stop feeling guilty and me stop feeling like I've been stomped on? I'm not going to sit around and mope, waiting for him to make a move. I don't do that, okay?"

Heartbreak may be inevitable, but Lydia doesn't handle it in the same way that other girls do. She's always prided herself in her ability to conduct herself as she feels like she's falling apart, and after the year that she's had, what with The Benefactor and her family's money issues, Lydia has only strengthened her ability to construct a solid façade out of lipstick and mascara.

"Well, _I_ don't know what to do," Scott tells her. "I'm an alpha, not a fucking miracle worker."

"Thanks for the help," Lydia says sarcastically, her stomach bottoming out. If Scott doesn't know how to handle Stiles, she really is doomed. Stiles will stay with Malia forever, simply out of obligation and guilt, and Lydia will go on to have an extremely successful career that always feels just _slightly_ empty because she has emotionally closed herself off to anybody who doesn't know that she is a banshee. It sounds like a wonderful life, really.

When their teacher comes back into the classroom, Scott gives a frustrated grunt but turns back around in his desk. He doesn't speak again until class has been dismissed and Lydia is in the process of placing her notebooks in her purse.

"Malia can smell emotions," he says, putting a hand over Lydia's hand to stop her movements. Lydia looks up at him. "She can smell the guilt that Stiles feels, and she can smell his love for you, and she can smell whatever you feel for him. By pretending like this, you're literally just hurting her more, okay? You're not doing anybody any favors."

As he walks away from her, Lydia wonders when Scott golden-retriever-McCall had gotten so smart.

It would be easy to dwell on this, but Lydia refuses to let herself do so. When the final bell rings, she heads to her AP Chem classroom and, upon finding it empty, lets out a sigh of relief. It's quiet in here, and she can settle into the familiar rhythm of being good at something. When Lydia props her textbook against the board and finds the extra problems in the back of the book, everything else goes away. The world seems to become quiet when her chalk is scratching against the board; this is her personal form of catharsis.

That is, until Stiles interrupts it.

From the flush of his face and from his uneven breathing, Lydia can tell that he's been running. He braces himself in the doorway to the classroom, clutching onto his side as he stamps a foot against the ground indignantly.

"I drove all the way to your fucking house and then you weren't there so I drove back here and I went to the physics classroom and then the English classroom-"

"Get to the point," Lydia says calmly, ignoring the pounding of her heart as she sets the chalk piece down and neatly swipes her fingertips against her skirt, simultaneously brushing invisible wrinkles from the garment.

"So here's the thing," Stiles says, walking into the classroom and shutting the door. "What happened this weekend was really shitty." Lydia bites her bottom lip and looks down at the floor. Stiles lurches forward, lifting her chin with his finger. He has so much energy flowing through him, and Lydia can feel it in his touch. "No, stop. You can't avoid that fact and you can't avoid me. Not anymore. We're being real now, because we can't start… this… without being honest with each other. What happened this weekend was shitty—we shouldn't have done that to Malia, and that's just the truth. But I lied when I said that we can't do it, Lydia, because we _so, so _can. This doesn't have to be difficult or insane or complicated, it just has to be what's right for us. And what was right for me, as a person, was coming clean to Malia and then coming back to you because I always fucking come back to you."

Lydia narrows her eyes, tilting her head sideways.

"Why do you assume that I wasn't lying this weekend when I agreed with you?"

He raises an eyebrow and gently cups her chin, getting closer.

"Really? Are you actually going to try to sabotage this relationship any more than we already have?"

It's so easy to smile when Stiles is smiling down at her, his expression open, his eyes hopeful.

They end up back at her house, lying on her bed with bare bodies and bare souls and when Lydia is beginning to fall asleep to the comforting rhythm of Stiles' breathing, his voice tugs her back into the present.

"I didn't notice the stars on your ceiling before," he says, voice so tender. Nobody's ever spoken to her like this before, and Lydia curls her toes at the warm, tingly feeling that it gives her.

"My dad put them up before he left," she tells him, nosing his neck sleepily. He exhales lengthily when she starts kissing him there; Stiles and Malia had a strict 'no biting' policy and so Lydia had spent a good five minutes just marking him with hickeys in different places. He's never had one before. It's something that is theirs. "I like making up stories to go with them."

"What do you mean?"

His voice rolls over her pleasantly as his hand moves from her hair to the skin on her lower back. He tugs, rolling Lydia's body even closer to his, and then kisses the top of her head.

"I mean… when I was a little girl, I would count different lifetimes for myself on the stars on my ceiling. Different choices that I could have made that would have gotten me to a better place than the one I was in… I would pretend that if I had gotten an A-plus on my spelling test instead of an A-minus, my parents might have stayed together. Or if I had chosen to enjoy the same things as my older sister instead of being my own person, she might have liked me. Or I would think about what would have happened if I had wised up and realized that the boy who was in love with me since third grade has been the right boy all along."

Stiles laughs, shaking his head from where it rests on top of Lydia's.

"I don't agree."

She flips over, a slight smile tugging at her lips. And she's kind of curious about what he's going to say next because Lydia can't really predict where he's going with this.

"What?"

"I just don't think that I was the right choice all along. I was, like, this pathetic virgin-"

"Virginity is not pathetic, Stilinski."

"-who was blindly obsessed with your beauty and your intelligence and the way that you seemed to be able to navigate other people so well. God, I thought you were so amazing. And I still do. But it's for different reasons now. We're friends, you know? And I know you so much better than I ever did back when I had that stupid crush on you in the third grade. We're different people now, and we grew together, and so I wasn't the right choice for you all along, but I also don't think that you were the right choice for me the whole time either."

Lydia feels her own laugh rather than hears it, and Stiles takes a moment before he starts laughing too.

"Stiles Stilinski, huh?" she says softly. "Who'd have thought?"

"Lydia Martin," he shoots back fervently. "Fuck yes. If my life is a game, I totally just won."

Rather than slap his arm, she kisses his lips.

"I think that you actually just reached a new level."

"Touché," Stiles murmurs, brushing some hair back from Lydia's face. She flips over again, letting her head rest on his body, her nose in the juncture between his neck and shoulder. She's finally ready to go to sleep. Her door is locked and her mom won't be getting home until ten and, besides, this isn't the first time Lydia has had a boy in her bedroom. "So."

"So?"

"Which lifetime would you choose?" Stiles asks, gesturing up to her stars. "Which choice would you change?"

"Nothing. I'm okay right now." He laughs, and she wants to make him laugh again. "Thanks for asking, though."

"Okay," Stiles says agreeably. "I have a proposition?"

"Another proposition? Don't you think you've exhausted your supply of propositions for today?"

He elbows her playfully.

"Shut up, Lyds. I'm propositioning."

"Fine. Proposition away. I won't stop you."

"I think that we should still make stories on your stars. Together."

"But-"

"But we're together now. I know. But instead of lingering on the past and thinking about all of the things we could have done differently, we'll make up futures on the stars instead. All of the things that we want to happen and have the power to do together. And no matter what happens with our ridiculously complicated lives, we'll have each other, and the stars, and the stories, and the future."

This is the boy that causes her to feel fireworks when he kisses her; this is the boy that makes Lydia feel loved beyond sex; this is the boy that told her to get off of her cute ass and dance with him, and she had actually listened. Even though the future isn't guaranteed to either of them, she finds herself nodding.

Lydia points to a star.

"Where do you want to start?"

**A/N: I am so excited to have finally written Stydia fanfiction. They have become one of my great loves when it comes to ships, and I am elated that the Stydia fandom is so wonderful. I really hope you you enjoyed this, as it has been nipping at me for a while now. If you'd like to talk to me (please come discuss Stydia; seriously, I will be forever grateful) I am at rongasm on tumblr and writergirl8 on twitter. **

**This fic was beta read by the amazing and beautiful Hannah, who is chasexjackson on tumblr. I hope that you review and tell me what you think! ~writergirl8**


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